


Spring Forward

by ProtoNeoRomantic



Series: Seasons Out of Time [2]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst and Feels, Buffy is the hero, Exes, F/M, Got too many projects going at once, I swear I'm still working on this!, Kid Fic, On a break in fact, Prophetic Visions, Secret Relationship, Slow To Update, Very Slow to Update, helping the helpless, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 11:30:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5003116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/ProtoNeoRomantic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the fall of her Senior Year, Buffy Summers returns to Sunnydale with a new baby (thanks to Giles) and finds parenthood isn't the only thing that's changed life on the Hellmouth for good.  Meanwhile events in L.A. raise the possibility that it may be time to move on to a different phase of her destiny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spring Forward

Jenny shifted the phone to her other shoulder to hold to her other ear and kept right on coding, anxious to have her new virtual classroom program up and running for the first day of school. She rolled her eyes in lieu of a sigh and made vague noises of attention and (arguably) agreement. Honestly, if these marathon conversations were going to become a daily occurrence, she was going to have to get a ear piece.

“Are you even listening to me, Janna?” her mother demanded. Sometimes, Jenny thought, she'd swear the woman was psychic... when she wasn't being willfully oblivious.

“Of course I am, Mother,” she answered fighting to keep impatience out of her voice. “Mrs. Evans' dog 'defiled' your lawn, _and_ your flower beds.”

“And then she has the nerve to claim that she has no idea why! As if she wasn't standing there watching him do it!” Jenny new better than to argue the obvious counter point, that maybe the neighbors were just a little careless with there dogs and not, in fact, conspiring to deliberately destroy her mother's yard. She continued to 'uhmm' in vague agreement, listening less and less as the commands and algorithms in front of her took more and more of her attention away from the conversation.

“Now, I _know_ you're not listening!” her mother huffed at length.

Jenny sighed and admitted it. “I'm trying to get some work done,” explained apologetically. “School starts again on Monday.”

“Which is why I asked you what you're even still doing there now that Angelus is no more.”

“I told you,” Jenny repeated, bristling, knowing all too well where this conversation was going, “It's a good job. Besides, there is evil enough to fight here without Angelus.”

“Yes but who are you fighting for?” her mother demanded. “Your own people have enemies enough to fight if you want to be a 'hero' Janna. There's no sense getting yourself killed for that man, and especially not for that girl!

“Mother, that has nothing to do—!” Jenny began to object fiercely. But her mother was having none of that.

“Are they or aren't they both coming back to that school on Monday!?!” her mother demanded.

“That's not the point!” Jenny insisted, not bothering to correct her on the details, like the fact that Buffy was still, technically expelled and even if readmitted would be on home-bound instruction for the next six weeks or that Rupert was likely to be fired when their relationship eventually, inevitably came to light. That would only lead to admitting that one of her main reasons for staying at Sunnydale High was to keep an eye on the Hellmouth when they couldn't. And to make sure someone more responsible than Rupert Giles was looking out for Willow.

In other words, a defense to the details would have been a confession to her mother's main accusation. The fact was, Jenny was staying in Sunnydale, not just to teach Computer Science and fight evil, but to support those who were already fighting to protect humanity from the threat posed by the Hellmouth. Which certainly included Willow, but mainly meant Rupert and Buffy.

The conversation ended like it always did lately. With her mother alternately pleading and demanding that she come home. With Jenny's firm insistence that she _was_ home. “Home is not just any place you happen to be,” her mother warned in parting. “Home is where your people are. Your clan. Your blood kin. Your family. Whatever you feel for these people, it can never be that. Why do you stay where you are not wanted? If you care so much for these people, why don't you just leave them alone and let them be happy together?”

~~~~~

“No,” Buffy repeated, a bit more definitely, despite the tears gathering in her eyes. She still had to duck her head just a little to say it, to avoid the wounded puppy-dog eyes of the man sitting at her bedside, but it was a very firm 'no' this time just the same. It had to be. There was no room for wavering here.

“What?” Giles repeated, then, plaintively he added, “Buffy I don't understand.”

“My answer is no,” she confirmed resolutely, looking into those sorrowful green eyes at last. “I'm not going to marry you. I... can't do this. It's, it's weird and it's wrong. Giles, what's the matter with you? I've barely finished the eleventh grade! I don't want to get married! I mean, isn't my life snowballing down hill fast enough without you trying to push fast forward?” Tears were streaming down Buffy's face now. She wiped them away fiercely, angrily.

Giles was taken aback. “I... I don't know quite what to say,” he admitted at last. “I didn't know you felt this way. After yesterday... what you said about... about being a family. I well, I just assumed...”

“We _are_ a family,” Buffy assured him through her tears. “Giles, we have a daughter! We're her _parents_! But that doesn't mean...” Buffy was sobbing harder than ever. Giles leaned towards her hospital bed, meaning to put his arms around her, to comfort her, but she pushed him away. “Giles,” she all but wailed, “All I ever wanted was to have some kind of a normal life; go to prom, maybe even college. But that's never going to happen. I mean, with the Slaying, never mind the baby, I won't even have time for a _normal_ boyfriend. The last thing I need is to keep sleeping with guys three to fifteen times my age, thinking somehow they're going to protect me; because, let's face it, you can't. Besides which, it's not even your job to protect me. You're supposed to put me in danger, and, and...”

And suddenly she was in his arms, sobbing against his chest as he leaned awkwardly between the chair and the bed, holding her tight and murmuring half intelligible assurance that everything would be alright. Assurances he less than half believed himself. Lord God, what a mess he'd made! What a terrible thing he'd done. Hearing himself lumped together in her mind with Angelus of all creatures was... sobering to say the least.

Yet, what she had said made perfect sense. Wrapped up in his own feelings as he'd been, selfishly focused on his own loneliness, his own need, Rupert had never let himself think too deeply about why Buffy had been so eager to jump directly from her disastrous romance with Angel into an affair with him. It stood to reason of course, that she had motives other than pleasure, other than passion or sexual need. She could have snapped her fingers and had a hundred or more men and boys aged sixteen to twenty-five lining up to satisfy her in that regard.

Of course, she had been seeking solace as much as sex. Of course, that was why she found herself falling into the arms of and older, supposedly wiser, arguable _parental_ figure like himself. She had been seeking a protector, emotionally if not physically. Someone to watch over her, to keep her heart safe. He had taken advantage of that, Giles realized. He had taken Buffy under false pretenses, on the basis of tacit promises on which he'd been unable to deliver.

The Chacham demon had all but said as much, Giles realized. It had referred to his ending things with Buffy after her supposed miscarriage (or perhaps to their entire courtship) as his 'betrayal' of her. And Giles could no longer deny the justice of that description. On either score.

But thinking of the Chacham brought other questions to the surface of his mind. Questions that needed answers. So when Buffy pulled gently away, assuring him in an almost steady voice that she was, “fine now,” He took a deep breath, straightened his glasses and plunged ahead before he could lose his nerve.

“Buffy?” he said gently, tentatively at first, she squeezed his hand and gave him a look of patient attention that gave hm the courage to go on. “There's still something I... That I... I need to ask you about,” he continued earnestly.

“So ask,” Buffy replied simply. Both her expression and her tone were calm, but otherwise impossible to read.

“One of the sources, erm... that is to say, _supernatural_ sources that I consulted when I was looking for you told me that you were, well um...” suddenly what he was about to ask seemed intrusive, presumptuous. He'd have to ask anyway. He needed to know. “Well, this fellow, this demon really...” he forced a stiff chuckle. “He told me, well he suggested, or erm, in point of fact he actually said...”

“Giles,” Buffy cut in in mild exasperation, “just spit it out while at least one of us is still young.”

Giles sighed. She resented him, of course. Why shouldn't she? But did she have to revert so entirely to form? Throwing out little barbed 'jokes' about his age as if the events of the last eight months had never happened at all. If nothing else, whether their future relationship was to be romantic, friendly, merely professional, or downright hostile; after all that they'd done and seen together, it should at least have progressed beyond this kind of childish nonsense.

“What I'm trying to say,” he continued with a barely suppressed mixture of anger and embarrassment, cleaning his glasses for an excuse not to look at her, “is that a Chacham demon I consulted told me that you were pregnant for the _second_ time, which... Well...” awkwardness and uncertainty overtook him again and he felt his way forward hesitantly, apologetically. “With the doctors having, having decided that, that... well, what happened in March was only a partial miscarriage... the, the... loss of one of two... embryos. And though, I grant that English isn't the Chacham's first language, ordinal numbers being being, so important to them, erm, ritually, I suppose you would say—”

Buffy stiffened and pulled back from him even further. Her voice was hard and searing as she warned, “Giles, you had better not be about to ask me what I think you're getting ready to ask me.”

“Buffy,” he countered fiercely, his temper boiling up from beneath his guilt again, “It may not be something you _want_ to talk about, but I believe I've a right to know—”

“No!” Buffy snapped so sharply that Giles was left, mouth gaping, blinked at her, stunned. “You don't have _any_ right _whatsoever_!” Buffy nearly shouted, practically shaking with indignation. “You broke up with _me_ , remember? When I was already so miserable I thought I would die! You just, it was like, 'Okay, sorry about the whole you thinking I might actually love you thing, but I was just sicking around to bear my rightful share of the guilt and obligation, so see you around.' So excuse me, but no, I don't owe you a goddamned thing, least of all details about my sex life that have nothing to do with you! And I'm sure as Hell not going to be with you, secretly or otherwise, just to make you feel better about yourself for not leaving me on my own with a kid! _She_ needs you to be her father; I don't! All I need you to be is my Watcher, because I am _not_ breaking in another new one. Is that understood?”

“Buffy,” he pleaded, “I understand how you must be feeling, but—”

“I really doubt that,” she interrupted, harshly but quietly, wiping at one last stray tear.

He started again, trying a different tack, “After everything we've been through, after the summer I've spent longing for you, searching for you, sorting through my feelings; how can I even pretend to go back to where we were before... everything that's happened between us?”

Buffy took a deep breath and sighed. When she spoke again, her tone was far less hostile, sympathetic even, but no less resolute. “No,” she agreed. “There's no going back, only forward. And that means learning from our mistakes. See, I had a lot of time to think this summer too. About my feelings, and what I could tell of yours, and I realized something, Giles. We're not in love. We never were, and we never will be. We were just... using each other to fill holes in our lives left by other people. And that is incredibly stupid and selfish and childish. Which are three things neither of us can afford to be. Because we have a Hellmouth to guard, a world to defend, and a child to raise. So I think it's time we both grew up some. Play time's over, Giles. Time to get back to work.”

 


End file.
